Ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants used in Arjan – Parishan protected area in Fars Province of Iran

Objective : Today, medicinal plants are widely used in remedies for several ailments and improvement of human health because of their pharmaceutical properties. This study aimed to document important useful medicinal plants and their medicinal characteristics for treatment of human ailments in the Arjan _ Parishan protected area in Fars province of Iran during 2010-2012. Materials and Methods : Data were obtained using direct interviews with 80 informants particularly those who were more familiar with the herbs and their medicinal properties. Collected plants were recognized and families, genera, and species determined using indispensable references. In this paper, scientific name, local name, parts used, and ways of application and ailments treated using traditional medicinal plant species have been provided. Results : We documented 85 plant species belonging to 39 families and 78 genera used for treating ailments. Among which, Asteraceae with 13 species was the most frequently used family and fruits and leaves were the favored parts for local users. Our results indicated that in this area, the highest compliance in the use of plants in treating ailments were related to the intestinal digestive system (40.8%). Conclusion : The present study is the first contribution to the ethnobotany of this region. Our results showed that some plants are used for medicinal purposes in this region, either for the same or for different purposes. Generally, the results of the present investigation can be used as a basis for selecting useful medicinal plants and also help to preserve precious information that may otherwise be lost to future generations.

since they are inexpensive and widely available. According to the statics of world health organization, more than 80% of world population particularly in the underdeveloped countries, provide their primary healthcare necessities from medicinal herbs (W HO, 2007). The history of using medicinal plant to treat diseases goes back to the ancient history. The study of local knowledge about medicinal herbs is becoming increasingly important in defining strategies for conservation and utilization of biological resources (Jeruto et al., 2008). The notable use and commercialization of medicinal plants to alleviate and cure health problems and ailments in all cities of the country, points out the importance of these natural resources in the folk medicine and culture of the Iranian people (Emami et al., 2012). However, most of the useful information is still available for traditional healers and knowledge of healers is either lost or passed to next generation by the word of mouth (Yirga, 2010). In many developing countries, medicinal plants have not been well studied, tested, or documented (Amiri and Joharchi, 2013). Ethnobotany deals with the collection of valuable medicinal plants by a group of people and describes their different uses (Safa et al., 2012). Hence, identification of useful medicinal plants is an excellent policy to understand their properties by indigenous inhabitants. Our surrounding nature is the habitat of many unknown medicinal plants that indigenous people use for treating their ailments. Iran, by having varied climate and geographical regions and also different types of mountains, plains, deserts, hills, river and lakes, and wetlands is considered to be a center for accessing valuable and scare medical species (Ahvazi et al., 2012). The native knowledge of medicinal plants has been put in danger of being lost by assimilating these tribes and loss of traditional community life (Mosaddegh et al., 2012). Therefore, it seems necessary to perform ethnobotanical studies in Iran to record all the knowledge of folk medicine practiced among native people (Naghibi et al., 2005). Arjan -Parishan protected area with two very beautiful wetlands Parishan and Arjan is situated 60 km west of Shiraz in Fars province. This geographic region is one of the most important human migration roads in Iran, showing a great plant biodiversity, so traditional usage of medicinal plant is a familiar therapeutic way for native people. In recent years, traditional use of plants for medical purposes has drawn the attention of researchers in our country as well (Ahvazi et al., 2012;Mirdeilami et al., 2011;Ghorbani, 2005;Mosaddegh et al., 2012;Safa et al., 2012). However, there are no published records on ethnobotanical knowledge of medicinal plants in the area. The main objective of the present study was to elicit data on the traditional uses of medicinal plants in the Arjan-Parishan protected area.

Study area
The Arjan -Parishan protected region (29˚34'48''Nand51˚54'36''E)coversan area of about 60000 hectares in southwest Iran (Figure 1), receiving an average annual rainfall of about 430 mm. This very beautiful area of attractive landscape such as the Arjan and Parishan wetlands is located between Kazeroon and Shiraz. The vast majority of the residents of this region are ethnic Persians. In this area, agriculture plays the main economic role.
People of the Arjan -Parishan region have a long history of utilizing medicinal plants to cure their diseases according to their cultural background. This area is important for plant biodiversity due to the presence of some important habitats such as international wetland of Parishan and "oak forest" that are dominated by Quercus brantii L. Approximately, 60 % of this area is surrounded by Zagros Mountain. International Wetland of Parishan is located 12 km to the southeast of Kazeroon. The climate of this area is arid and cold desert with the average elevation 820 mabove sea level. Arjan wetland with altitude of 2015 m above sea level is situated 60 km west of Shiraz in Fars province. This area has semi-arid to semi-humid climate. Due to variation in altitude, topography, and bioclimate within this area, the diversity of medicinal plants and indigenous medical knowledge are rich. Therefore, this biodiversity can be important in aspects of ethnobotanical and pharmaceutical potentials. At present, the Arjan -Parishan area is considered as protected area by IUCN classification.

Materials and Methods
In order to gather information on medicinal species found in the Arjan-Parishan protected area, an investigation was performed during 2010-2012. According to the geographical and topographic maps, various parts of the region were referred in proper seasons and then the vernacular information of plants and their usages were collected from wellexperienced people and finally all collected plants specimens were dried and pressed. All plant species encountered during field observations were recorded. A questionnaire was administered to the local people, through face-to-face interviews.
During the interviews, local names, utilized parts, and preparation methods of the plants as well as information on the types of ailments treated using traditional medicinal plant species were recorded. The informants were selected as they were known as being knowledgeable by the local community. Interviews were done at informants' homes, farms, or medicinal plant markets, after making clear that they are participating in a research project with the purpose of saving the local traditional knowledge.

Discussion
During recent decades, chemical side effects have been identified and actions have been taken to overcome this problem (Mozaffari Nejad et al., 2013). Hence, even in the modern age, in developed countries, people still rely on traditional system of healthcare not only because of its low price, but also due to low side effects as compared to modern allopathic medicine (Awan et al., 2011). It is believed that rational use of native medicinal plants along with effective synthetic drugs may benefit and improve the quality of life and living standards of the native inhabitants (Namsa et al., 2011;Oliveira et al., 2011). Despite the importance of these plants for health improvement, it seems that some of the most promising medicinal plants have not yet been fully identified. For this reason, documentation of the indigenous knowledge through ethno-botanical studies is important for the conservation and utilization of biological resources (Muthu et al., 2006). Because of seasonal, soil, climatic, and topography variation, Iran is rich in plant biodiversity and especially medicinal plants.  The Arjan -Parishan protected area comprise great biodiversity of plant species bearing variation of climatic and also different ecological habitats such as mountains, hills, plains, valleys, and lakes. It appears that there are many medicinal uses for the treatment of different diseases in the study area which were rarely revealed before this. According to the current study, Asteraceae and Lamiaceae were the dominant locally used families (Figure 4). Our results are also in agreement with ethnobotanical studies performed in other parts of Iran such as Hormozgan province (Safa et al., 2012), Kohghiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad province (Mosaddegh et al., 2012), and Maraveh Tappe region, north of Iran (Mirdeilami et al., 2011). It may be due to adaptation of these families with arid and semiarid conditions. Moreover, from the large genera found in this area, Ziziphus and Amygdalus can be referred which provide suitable habitat for other medicinal plants because of the vicinity to the Zagros mountain range. From the 85 species reported in this paper, some of the plants are being used more frequently and also are well-known compared to others which may be due to their availability and knowledge of the local people. Traditional understanding of phytotherapy of this district provides excellent outcome in treating different types of ailment such as intestinal-digestive disorders, followed by bone and joint pain, kidney and urogenital diseases, blood sugar and lipid, common cold, expectorant and fever, appetizing, heart-blood circulatory system disorders, respiratory disorders, antiseptic, skin and hair, menstruate, insect bite, as well as as a sedative. The high use of medicinal plants by the native inhabitants to cure intestinal-digestive ailments could be attributed to the high preponderance of these disorders in the area. It appears that the gastrointestinal system is the most common use in studies in different districts of Iran (Mosaddegh et al., 2012;Miraldi et al., 2001). The most frequently used parts by local people were leaves and fruits. Our data are in agreement with the recent results of Rajaei and Mohamadi (2012). They reported that the leaves are the dominant part used. As shown in Table 2, in order to relieve pain, people use some plants that are mentioned more frequently by the informants for the same use compared to other plants such as Glycyrrhiza glabra L, Pistacia khinjuk, Capparis spinosa, and Myrtus communis. Considering the extreme importance of plants of the area in treating gastrointestinal ailments, it is recommended to conduct further studies to identify the active ingredients of these herbs.
In this research paper, efforts have been made to document the traditional knowledge of important medicinal plants of the Arjan -Parishan protected area. The presence of 85 medicinal plants indicates high biodiversity of medicinal plant in the region. These plants are abundantly found in this region and are considered to be used for treatment of various diseases. It is concluded that the Arjan -Parishan protected area has good ethnobotanical potentials for medicinal plants and all of the plants found in this study are most favorite among the local people. According to the results of this research, fruits and leaves are the major used parts in this region. It is important to emphasize that intestinal-digestive system is the first target for traditional medicine in the area. Therefore, the information documented on the medicinal plants of the Arjan -Parishan protected area may serve as baseline data for future pharmacological and phytochemical studies and consequently discover new drugs.